Dr David Snyder on When to Add Ruxolitinib to Treat GVHD

Ruxolitinib should be added to treatment of patients with graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) are not improving on steroids or whose symptoms return after tapering, said David Snyder, MD, associate chair of the Department of Hematology & Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation at City of Hope.

Transcript

When should treatment for graft-versus-host disease be switched from steroids to ruxolitinib?

Well, the studies that were done using ruxolitinib as salvage therapy defined steroid refractoriness by a few parameters. One is that a patient has been on corticosteroids at a certain dose for these 5 days with no significant response or 7 days in some studies. Or that the patient has been on steroids for that length of time and then you’re unable to taper off the steroids without seeing the GVHD flare. Those are the situations where you would consider adding ruxolitinib.